


the best me I can be

by bevsmrsh



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Anorexia Nervosa, Anxiety, Child Abuse, Depression, Eating Disorders, Hate Crimes, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Non-Verbal, Physical Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad Ending, Sexual Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, hyper fixation, tags will be added as needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 13:06:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18917626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bevsmrsh/pseuds/bevsmrsh
Summary: Everyone's a little fucked up during their teenage years, and sometimes people are even more than a little fucked up.BIG WARNINGS FOR: abuse of all kinds, eating disorders (anorexia mostly), and suicidal actions!!!PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO ANY OF THOSE TOPICS! all of these things (and more) will be discussed in detail and take place in this!“What if this is the best version of me?” He spoke, breaking their hour long streak of silence. His throat was dry and the air was even more dry. His insides felt disgusting. He felt disgusting.“Richie, don’t say that.” His mother sort of smiled at him, shaking her head and flipping the page of her Cosmo magazine.





	the best me I can be

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how I feel about this

The room was clinically white. An inspirational poster hung just above his mother’s head, the curve of her hair only just blocking out the last few words. He sat uncomfortably low in his chair; it hurt his back to sit like this, but he didn’t want to be comfortable. He knew he couldn’t get comfortable with this no matter how he sat in the chair. His arms were crossed tightly across his chest, guarding him, making him feel safe and warm in a place that he could trust. In a place like himself.

 

“What if this is the best version of me?” He spoke, breaking their hour long streak of silence. His throat was dry and the air was even more dry. His insides felt disgusting. He felt disgusting.

 

“Richie, don’t say that.” His mother sort of smiled at him, shaking her head and flipping the page of her Cosmo magazine. She wasn’t reading it. She can’t read that fast. She’s looking at the pictures and trying not to look at him, but he’s not letting her. He’s staring deeply at her. He can feel his eyes starting to burn from how long they’ve been open, just staring at her.

 

She doesn’t even like Cosmo magazines.

 

“Richard Tozier?” There’s a nurse now, standing in front of a closing door at the front of the room. His mother smiles even more than before and sets down the magazine, standing and giving the nurse a little wave of her hand while Richie hauls himself up onto his feet. His heart feels like it might stop it’s pounding so hard.

 

They move swiftly through the waiting room to the nurse, through the door to the hall, through the hall to the scales and stadiometer and computers. Richie feels like he’s going to throw up and cry and scream. Maybe at the same time. He’s shaking, and he doesn’t know if it’s from the nerves or the cold or the empty stomach.

 

The nurse smiles warmly at him, and her name is Jenny and she’s very nice, and Jenny the nurse places a hand on his shoulder when he’s looking at the scales and tells him, “we’re going to have you weighed in a private room, actually.”

 

_ Fuck. _

 

Richie nods and goes into the room he’s supposed to go into and takes off his shoes and removes everything from his pockets when he’s told to and he sits on the chair he’s supposed to sit on. The doctor, his doctor, Dr. Sanchez, he smiles at Richie and says hello very politely and Richie responds when he’s supposed to and with what he’s supposed to and then he stands up to fast and has to catch himself on the chair, but he doesn’t let his mother see that he’s stumbling. He sees Dr. Sanchez grimace.

Richie takes off his sweatshirt and blinks too much and swallows too hard and it feels like his knees are buckling as he steps over to the scale. His mother is pretending that she’s not interested in looking. She’s acting as if her eyes aren’t glued to the little weights Dr. Sanchez was moving.

 

“Rich…” His mother closed her eyes and shook her head, the look of disappointment only moving from Dr. Sanchez’s face to hers the longer the number stood there. Richie held his own look of disappointment though.

 

  1. He could taste the number, and it felt so much higher than the 101 he had seen on the scale in the bathroom last night.



  
  


 

He wasn’t listening when Dr. Sanchez and his mother began talking. He answered the questions he was asked, and then he sat silently with this hands clasped neatly in his lap. He was cold. He was always cold, but now he was especially cold.

 

“Richie?” He was comatose, a speck on the chair, slowly dissolving into himself. He shouldn’t have eaten that popsicle last night. She was wrong -- he could feel the sugar seeping into his bloodstream and weighing him down. He shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t have. He won’t let himself do that again. He won’t. He won’t.

 

“Richie, how are you feeling today?”

 

Richie shrugged, looking up at Dr. Sanchez, “I don’t know. Fine, I guess. I’m fine.” He wasn’t really feeling any certain thing. He hardly felt things how he was supposed to anymore. He didn’t feel anything. It was empty or it was too much and even when it was nothing it was overwhelming. Nothing worked, nothing he had tried anyways.

 

“Good. That’s good to hear.” Dr. Sanchez spoke like he was trying to encourage him, but Richie didn’t think he needed any encouraging. He wasn’t trying to do anything. The doctor began speaking to his mother again and Richie zoned out completely, staring up at the ceiling tile that had been painted by one of the kids at Derry General Hospital. That’s where they were now. The hospital. His mother didn’t like any doctors unless they worked specifically at a hospital. Otherwise they weren’t qualified enough to see her son.

 

Her son was very sick, that’s what she’d tell the women at her book club when they’d see him walking up and down the stairs to get water. Her Richie is sick, he’s just having a bad year, this year has been very hard on him. Her son can’t come to school today because he’s in the hospital again.

Richie can just imagine her sitting on the couch next to the phone every day while he’s gone, anxiously awaiting the phone call about how he collapsed in class again, or how they found him dead in the bathroom, or how he was in the nurse’s office because he threw up again and he can’t just go back to class, not now. Not when he’s sick.

 

And her son is  _ very _ sick.

 

“Richie?” He looks at Dr. Sanchez again. He didn’t realize he had almost been asleep. He couldn’t wait to crawl into bed when this was all over. “Have you been doing anything we’ve talked about?”

 

“Yep. I think the breathing exercises really helped.”

 

“This isn’t a joke, Richie. Anorexia is a very serious condition for someone to have.”

 

“That would be a great thing to tell me if I was actually anorexic. There’s nothing  _ wrong  _ with me. I’m just not hungry!”

 

“Richie,”

 

“Dr. Sanchez, really, I’m fine! I feel absolutely fine! There’s  _ nothing _ wrong with me!”

 

“Have you ever had him speak to a psychologist?’ Dr. Sanchez looked at his mother, and Richie was ready to explode.

 

“No! I haven’t spoken to a psychologist! I don’t need to speak to a psychologist!”

 

His mother cringed at the look Dr. Sanchez gave her. They finished the appointment with Dr. Sanchez upping the dosage on all of Richie’s medications before sending them out with a pleasant goodbye.

 

“And Mrs. Tozier, please consider what we spoke about.”

 

His mother paused, then nodded. “I’ll talk to Wentworth about it.”

  
  


 

The walk to the car was terrible and silent until they both settled uncomfortably into their seats. Richie turned off the radio before they even pulled out of the parking spot.

“Mom, why can’t  _ I _ just have this conversation, Dr. Sanchez? Why don’t you trust me enough to know what’s happening/!”

 

His mother paused. “Because you’ll lie to him about what’s going on.”

 

“You think I’m a liar? Why would you ever say that about me! I’ve never lied to you!”

 

“You lie about  _ everything  _ ALL the time!”

 

“I’M NOT A LIAR!”

 

“You ARE a  _ LIAR  _ Richie! You  _ LIE  _ to us! Every single day the minute you come home I say ‘hi Richie, how are you? Did you eat your lunch? Do you want to talk about anything? How’s school going?’ and you tell me NOTHING! You tell me to fuck off and leave you alone and let you go to your room and I am TRYING MY BEST to be a good mother and to help you and you won’t LISTEN!”

 

“Oh, so now it’s MY FAULT THAT I’M SICK!?”

 

“I never called you sick!”

 

“THAT’S ALL YOU EVER TELL YOUR FRIENDS AND DAD AND THE SCHOOL! THAT’S ALL YOU EVER TELL ANYONE! YOU JUST  _ LOVE  _ THAT THIS IS HAPPENING TO YOU SO YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT WITH EVERYONE! Every fucking day you call up your friends right after dinner and tell them about how I didn’t even leave my room today. You LOVE the attention that you get from having a problem child!”

 

“Richie, do you even HEAR YOURSELF? You think that I LIKE having to let the world know that I’m a failure of a mother for letting you do this to yourself? I hate this! I’d be so much happier if we didn’t have to do this every week! It KILLS ME to see that number drop every day! You’re going to  _ die  _ if you keep doing this. You’re going to end up dead. I’m going to find you in your room and you’re not going to get to tell me to stay away from you anymore.”

 

They have this argument often. Almost every time they go to the doctor’s office.

 

“You’d be happier if I was gone.”

 

“Richie, don’t say that.”

 

“It’s true, I don’t know why you’re pretending it’s not.”

 

“If you were gone I don’t know what I would do with myself. You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. All I want is for you to get better. I love you more than anything in this world and I would do  _ anything  _ for you, Richie.  _ Anything _ .”

 

They were still in the parking garage, sitting in their shitty beat up old 1979 country squire, and his mother was gripping the steering wheel so tightly. So tightly.

 

“Can I drive home?”

 

His mother looked at him and sort of smiled and nodded, she smoothed back the hair in his face and kissed his forehead before she got out of the car and he slid over to her seat. He pulled out of the parking space and almost hit a car in the process, but it’s okay, because now his mother is his mom and she’s pointing at strange people on the street corners and smiling at them.

 

By the time they get home they’re both laughing about some ad on the radio Richie had done an impression of. They always got along much better after their fights. Especially the big ones.

 

When they got inside, his mother collected the mail from the dining room table and flipped through it, leaning up against the kitchen counter. She was staring at the back of his head as Richie was making a break for the stairs.

 

“Rich, how would you feel about spending some time in a recovery group?”

 

“I’d rather die.”

 

“Your father thinks it’s a good idea.”

 

Richie turned around, holding onto the railing for his life. “Dad thinks letting me go to art school is a good idea too. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

 

Mom nodded, setting the mail down next to her. “You’re starting tomorrow. I’ll take you after school.”


End file.
